I had a great deal of fun with this project. Currently, I am working with a young man with Muscular Dystrophy. Prior to this position I knew very little about Muscular Dystrophy so I figured I would spend a little time learning more and sharing that knowledge with the class. The young man I work with is extremely good natured and really enjoyed watching me work on this project. Additionally, I thought I would challenge myself by using new to me technology and completing the assignment on an IPAD. Some components of the assignment proved more of a challenge than others.
When selecting the images I began with some searches on the Creative Commons website. First with information related to muscular dystrophy and their logo. Realizing I could not to a project about Muscular Dystrophy without referring to “Todd” I drafted a letter to his parents to ensure I had appropriate permissions to use his image. Once I had a general idea, I let my imagination run wild and searched for images to modify. I really did not pay attention to the types of files I used. By default I save everything as a .jpg file and did not give it a second thought. The reason I do this is because JPG files are universal and no matter what program I decide to use I can place and manipulate these images. I edited my images with “photoshop mix”, a free app in the Apple Store, which had many of the same features of full featured Photoshop. The feature I missed the most in the free was the use of the layer feature. I was essentially limited to two layers causing me to save and combine items in several repeated steps. I had considerable difficultly blending colors around the cut outs of my subject. I spent a great deal of time with a stylus and the image zoomed in, however I was unable to get the colors perfect on the photoshop images. The images all passed the friends and family review, however I wish I was able to blend the colors better.
The audio portion proved to be difficult. I found several resources for Creative Commons music, but was unable to download the songs. After extensive research and a two dollar investment I purchased an alternate web browser called ICabMobile. This browser allowed me to download several free MP3 songs from a Creative Commons site, BenSound. I elected to download the files as MP3 because of my familiarity and their universal applications. Once downloaded, I modified them with a free version of an app called Hokusai which reviews stated as an iPad version of Audicity. The free version of Hokusai has a fair amount of effects available, enough for the casual user. I upgraded to the pro package so I was able to explore advanced features. While exploring I spent a great deal of time manipulating individual tracks. I split the stereo tracks and would alternate between adjusting sound on left or right ear. For the submitted assignment I selected a ten second track, which I used to fade in at the beginning then I increased the pitch and used it to fade out at the end of the project. The voice over portion is often easy for me as I am able to speak clearly and annunciation is no problem.
Early in the project we were advised to create a slideshow of 5-10 slides. I used Microsoft PowerPoint on my IPad to complete this task. This task was relatively easy as PowerPoint is incredibly user friendly. What surprised me here was PowerPoint on the iPad does not allow you to save your PowerPoint as a movie like the desktop version does. I was unable to figure out a way to export the finished product into anything that would be recognized by iMovie. I ended up saving each slide as an image by doing separate screen captures in order to import them into iMovie. Once the images were in iMovie, I arranged them in the preferred order, then completed the voice accompaniment. I edited the slides duration to match the voice over. I then imported the audio files I had prepared earlier in Hokusai and placed them in their respective places on the video timeline. After putting the finishing touches on the video, I elected to export it to my photo album as a .mov file. This was the default option on iMovie. I then signed into my YouTube account to upload the video. Thinking back, I could have saved a few minutes by uploading directly from iMovie to YouTube. Once the video was uploaded I copied the embed code and pasted it into my wiki. I then used an html page editor to create a new webpage on my personal domain. I then pasted the embed code on my personal webpage. I returned to YouTube to caption the video. I was unable to figure out how to caption the YouTube video on the mobile device. A Google search revealed I wasn't the only user with that issue. The alternative that popped into my head was an online resource I had used before called ZenCaptions. They close caption videos at the cost of a dollar a minute. I find captioning can sometimes be tedious as I grow weary of my own voice and never follow a script. I sent the url to ZenCaptions and made a payment but as of this writing the professionally captioned file hasn't been emailed back to me. Hopefully by time the assignment is graded the captioning is complete. As a stop gap measure, I edited the transcript on the automatic caption feature that YouTube provides, for that feature however I had to use my laptop.
The review video can also be viewed here: Charles Personal Webpage
I had a great deal of fun with this project. Currently, I am working with a young man with Muscular Dystrophy. Prior to this position I knew very little about Muscular Dystrophy so I figured I would spend a little time learning more and sharing that knowledge with the class. The young man I work with is extremely good natured and really enjoyed watching me work on this project. Additionally, I thought I would challenge myself by using new to me technology and completing the assignment on an IPAD. Some components of the assignment proved more of a challenge than others.
When selecting the images I began with some searches on the Creative Commons website. First with information related to muscular dystrophy and their logo. Realizing I could not to a project about Muscular Dystrophy without referring to “Todd” I drafted a letter to his parents to ensure I had appropriate permissions to use his image. Once I had a general idea, I let my imagination run wild and searched for images to modify. I really did not pay attention to the types of files I used. By default I save everything as a .jpg file and did not give it a second thought. The reason I do this is because JPG files are universal and no matter what program I decide to use I can place and manipulate these images. I edited my images with “photoshop mix”, a free app in the Apple Store, which had many of the same features of full featured Photoshop. The feature I missed the most in the free was the use of the layer feature. I was essentially limited to two layers causing me to save and combine items in several repeated steps. I had considerable difficultly blending colors around the cut outs of my subject. I spent a great deal of time with a stylus and the image zoomed in, however I was unable to get the colors perfect on the photoshop images. The images all passed the friends and family review, however I wish I was able to blend the colors better.
The audio portion proved to be difficult. I found several resources for Creative Commons music, but was unable to download the songs. After extensive research and a two dollar investment I purchased an alternate web browser called ICabMobile. This browser allowed me to download several free MP3 songs from a Creative Commons site, BenSound. I elected to download the files as MP3 because of my familiarity and their universal applications. Once downloaded, I modified them with a free version of an app called Hokusai which reviews stated as an iPad version of Audicity. The free version of Hokusai has a fair amount of effects available, enough for the casual user. I upgraded to the pro package so I was able to explore advanced features. While exploring I spent a great deal of time manipulating individual tracks. I split the stereo tracks and would alternate between adjusting sound on left or right ear. For the submitted assignment I selected a ten second track, which I used to fade in at the beginning then I increased the pitch and used it to fade out at the end of the project. The voice over portion is often easy for me as I am able to speak clearly and annunciation is no problem.
Early in the project we were advised to create a slideshow of 5-10 slides. I used Microsoft PowerPoint on my IPad to complete this task. This task was relatively easy as PowerPoint is incredibly user friendly. What surprised me here was PowerPoint on the iPad does not allow you to save your PowerPoint as a movie like the desktop version does. I was unable to figure out a way to export the finished product into anything that would be recognized by iMovie. I ended up saving each slide as an image by doing separate screen captures in order to import them into iMovie. Once the images were in iMovie, I arranged them in the preferred order, then completed the voice accompaniment. I edited the slides duration to match the voice over. I then imported the audio files I had prepared earlier in Hokusai and placed them in their respective places on the video timeline. After putting the finishing touches on the video, I elected to export it to my photo album as a .mov file. This was the default option on iMovie. I then signed into my YouTube account to upload the video. Thinking back, I could have saved a few minutes by uploading directly from iMovie to YouTube. Once the video was uploaded I copied the embed code and pasted it into my wiki. I then used an html page editor to create a new webpage on my personal domain. I then pasted the embed code on my personal webpage. I returned to YouTube to caption the video. I was unable to figure out how to caption the YouTube video on the mobile device. A Google search revealed I wasn't the only user with that issue. The alternative that popped into my head was an online resource I had used before called ZenCaptions. They close caption videos at the cost of a dollar a minute. I find captioning can sometimes be tedious as I grow weary of my own voice and never follow a script. I sent the url to ZenCaptions and made a payment but as of this writing the professionally captioned file hasn't been emailed back to me. Hopefully by time the assignment is graded the captioning is complete. As a stop gap measure, I edited the transcript on the automatic caption feature that YouTube provides, for that feature however I had to use my laptop.